Australia’s American Ambassador Kevin Rudd is being quoted
“Murdoch is not just a news organisation. Murdoch operates as a political party, acting in pursuit of clearly defined commercial interests, in addition to his far-right ideological world view.”
Crikey’s article did not name Lachlan specifically, but “the Murdochs” in general. So if Rupert agrees with Lachlan about this article, shouldn’t he also be suing? And if he doesn’t, might we conclude that Rupert doesn’t mind the imputation of being Trump’s co-conspirator? Or, at the very least, that Rupert doesn’t consider Crikey’s article damaging enough to sue over? And if that’s not it, then why hasn’t Rupert sued?
It has been almost two years since Kevin Rudd uploaded a video to his social media channels calling Rupert Murdoch an “arrogant cancer on our democracy” and invited Australians to sign his petition for a royal commission into media dive
rsity.It gathered half a million signatures, including that of former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, and triggered a year-long Senate committee inquiry that concentrated its focus on the influence of Murdoch’s News Corp empire.
The truth is: Mr Morrison would be lucky to have an economic record anything like my government. If Mr Morrison wants to campaign on his record of higher taxes, higher spending, falling wages, higher debt and record waste, then I say ‘come in spinner’.
While there is no voter fraud in Australia it seems Morrison and the LNP are for Voter Suppression and hope that non-compulsory voting can be introduced to change our Democratic system sufficiently, and alter the playing field in their favor. They have been working on ridding Australia of the ABC and all the fail-safe mechanisms that we are most admired for among the world’s Democracies when it comes to voting.. The LNP is a coalition of minority parties Nationals and Liberals with Labor actually getting the majority votes. If the Liberals could suppress votes and rid the country of the publicly owned broadcaster they believe they could improve their voting status and gain seats in their own right. The Republicans in the US are doing it and so our unimaginative Liberals have fallen into line not just diminishing but ridding us of our Democractic systems,why? Because with the backing of money, media, and voter suppression they believe they’d never lose and could form an Autocracy. Democracy only exists if parties accept their loss and governments act for those all citizens even those that voted against them.
Scott Morrison’s plan to introduce US-style “voter ID” laws for Australian elections represents a stealth assault on compulsory voting that will radicalize our politics and stop ordinary working families from exercising their sacred right to vote.
Tucker Carlson and Sharri Markson on Fox News Sharri Markson says YouTube suspension of Sky News Australia is ‘cancellation of free speech’ Markson and Carlson are both paid Murdochians. Well paid, millionaires in fact but nevertheless still simply workers working for the billionaire and claiming they’re “fair and balanced” (ODT)
Rudd told Acma that claims broadcast on Sky included: “Covid-19 is not a pandemic; the vaccinated are more likely to die than the unvaccinated; hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are proven, safe treatments for Covid-19; the medical profession are concealing these treatments from the public for political purposes and face masks do not inhibit the spread of Covid-19.” “While it is unrealistic to believe that we can ever stamp out misinformation, especially in the age of social media, it is especially alarming that so much of this content has been crafted and distributed by the country’s largest media company, News Corporation, principally through Murdoch’s Sky News,” Rudd wrote.“Freedom of expression is essential to the functioning of our democracy, but Australians expect that opinions will have a reasonable basis in fact.” The Guardian has approached Sky News Australia for comment. Hanson-Young said she wanted to ask the media watchdog why the spread of misinformation wasn’t allowed on the internet but appeared to be OK on TV. “G
We learnt this week that, in the absence of a full time Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd has been hitting the phones with Pfizer, to try to sort out Australia’s vaccine debacle. But it turns out Kevin isn’t the only former Prime Minister doing more work than Scott Morrison right now. With the vaccine rollout in disarray and a Prime Minister that seems to vanish faster than an AFP hacking investigation into Greg Hunt’s porn tweets, almost every former PM with a pulse (and a few without one) are doing more than Scomo.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp poses a real threat to Australian democracy, claiming it has surpassed the Coalition or Labor as the most powerful political force in the country.
“No government should let a single company control the biggest newspapers in every capital city bar one, plus a television station, plus the national newswire,” Rudd said. “Let alone an American billionaire like Murdoch
So what should be done about the rolling crises washing over what remains of the Australian media? Rupert Murdoch has been up to his neck in the elevation and removal of Australian prime ministers for the better part of a decade. The ABC has seen the conservatives politicise its board, demolish its funding and pressure its management to get rid of troublesome journalists. And now we face the prospect of the disappearance of Australia’s longest, independent print masthead (Fairfax) as it is consumed by a television company (Nine) which is chaired by Peter Costello.
If ever there was a case for a full royal commission into the abuse of media power in Australia, it is now. A free media is the lifeblood of a democracy. But media freedom in Australia is now under structural threat from a combination of extreme ideological conservatism, fuelled by rampant commercial interests.
I believe Rudd in this instance. News Corp wants to see Sky as Fox News is in the USA, So does the IPA and the Conservatives in the LNP government. Australia is fast becoming embarassment to itself allowing all our current public institutions to become politicized by the appointment of heads as in Treasury recently. Murdoch and the IPA are the voices of Corporate lobbyists. They make mistakes at times and regret the Royal Commission into Banks but are calling to socialize the energy sector.
How obvious is this. Abbott destroyed the NBN, tried to do the same to the ABC and wants to kneecap Renewables and News Corp and the IPA have been behind this American business model and Dream all the way currently ranking us the worst in the world on Climate inaction (ODT)
In October last year, he suggested the Coalition government was deliberately hamstringing the NBN at the behest of Rupert Murdoch, who he said wanted less competition for his cable television network.
Then in November, Rudd used the Saturday Paper to call for no less than a Royal Commission into what he called the News Corporation “cancer” and its impact on democracy — in spite of the fact, as writer Karen Middleton pointed out, that the company had backed his rise.
Author’s note: Today I have given over my daily post to a repudiation by Kevin Rudd of the Murdoch press. At the end I have included the AUSTRALIAN PRESS COUNCIL REGULATIONS. ANOTHER MURDOCH TABLOID WHOPPER With all the recent coverage of Turnbull’s telephone encounter with Trump, I missed a story run on 1 February 2017…
In the past 48 hours we seem to have been flooded with people desperate to compare Tony Abbott to Kevin Rudd. This is supposed to be an insult, a way of bringing home to Abbott just how gauche his undermining of Malcolm Turnbull has become. And it’s true that Rudd hurt himself in the eyes of many Australians, especially Labor voters, with his long campaign to destabilise Julia Gillard.
I re-watched Whiplash the other day. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a terrific, morally indefensible movie about a music teacher who pushes a young jazz drummer to greatness. Its unusual central message is that abuse works. Bigoted insults, physical assault, even driving a student to suicide are all justified, if these tactics produce one Buddy Rich clone 50 years past its use-by-date.
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